


A Promise Made

by Zee487



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Post-Finale, Spoilers for Carry On, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28563042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zee487/pseuds/Zee487
Summary: Sam made a promise to his brother and he's going to keep it.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 112





	A Promise Made

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @aintnovirtue for doing a very thorough beta at the last moment! You are wonderful.

Sam doesn’t tell anybody for three weeks. 

He does the hunt in Austin alone. He drifts for a while. He and Miracle go and see the ocean. He stares at the ceilings in motel room after motel room dressed in Dean's old hoodie and barely sleeps. 

He feels empty most days. Like Dean died and tore out every single one of his organs along the way, like every piece of life Sam had in him was wrapped up on that pyre.

He doesn’t really have a plan. He just knows that he can’t go back to the bunker, haunted by all the ghosts there. He’s never liked it anyway, has never felt that same connection Dean did to it. 

The Impala helps. Miracle does too. There are brief moments, flashes of time when Sam is driving the Impala down the road and Miracle is curled up with her head in his lap that Sam feels… Not okay. But maybe like he could be okay at some point in the future.

Donna is the one who figures it out first. Apparently she and Dean have a game of Words with Friends going and after Dean doesn’t lay or respond to any of her mocking texts and then worried calls, she starts texting and calling Sam. 

When Sam sees the first text from Donna, he gets rip-roaring drunk. He lies on the bed, room whirling around him as his phone starts blowing up. Donna is calling. About forty-five minutes later, Jody’s name flashes across the screen. He knows he’s going to have to answer it at some point. And then what? Say, Dean’s dead? Dean died in a barn three weeks ago? Dean made Sam promise not to bring him back? Sam’s going to live the rest of his awful, terrible life alone?

He takes out the demon knife from Dean’s duffel bag and stares at it. It would be so easy, so simple to just slice right there along his wrist. He’s drunk enough to even consider it romantic, very Romeo and Juliet. The boy who couldn’t live without his brother. 

Sam doesn’t do it, of course. He made a promise, and he’s going to keep it no matter how much it tears him up inside. 

He fumbles the knife back into the bag and grabs at the now-nearly constantly ringing phone. Jody, he sees briefly, before he swipes it open. He barely has time to bring the phone to his head before Jody’s berating him, “Sam Winchester, there had BETTER be a good reason for this-” 

Sam interrupts before she can go on, “Dean’s dead.”

Jody chokes on the lecture she’s giving. “What?”

“Dean’s dead,” Sam’s aware he’s slurring, but he’s long past caring. “Died three weeks ago. In Ohio. Vamps got him.” 

There’s an awful silence on the other end.

“Sam. Are you- are you serious?” Jody almost whispers, and Sam sees red. He grips the phone so hard that he can hear it start to crack. Like he would joke about this. Like he would ever think this would be funny. Now he’s going to have to say it again. A third time. 

“Dean’s dead. Stop calling me and have everybody else stop calling me. I’m not going to kill myself or bring him back.” He hangs up and then hurls his phone as hard as he can across the room. 

He’s never having that conversation again.

In the sober light of day, he can see how cruel he’s being to Jody, Donna, all of their friends. But he can’t quite make himself care. They would try to help him. Try to comfort him. Act like they understand what it’s like to lose Dean Winchester. 

They don’t have a fucking clue. 

They will never know what it feels like to lose Dean over a hundred times and know with gut-wrenching certainty that this is the last time. They’ll never wake up and have a sweet blissful moment of reaching over to Dean’s side of the bed before realizing that it’s empty. They’ll never walk over to the passenger side of the Impala and get in before realizing that they have to drive now. 

They don’t know shit about what Sam’s feeling, and Sam can’t make himself care.

He leaves the shattered remains of his phone behind in the motel room trash. He turns off all of the phones in the glove box. Maybe someday he’ll turn them back on, apologize, visit again. But not right now. Not while the wound is still bleeding through the bandage. 

He wonders where Dean is, if Heaven is back open now that Jack is in charge or if Dean got shuttled off to some other afterlife dimension that they still don’t know about. He feels fairly confident that Jack wouldn’t let Dean go to Hell or Purgatory, or even worse, the Empty. 

Sometimes, Sam thinks about the memories that Dean’s seeing if he’s in Heaven, how many of them were from those last five perfect years they had together. He plays a little game with himself where he’ll try to pick the top ten memories of Dean’s life. He never wins.

He runs out of money and fake credit cards in Midway, Georgia, about thirty miles from Savannah. There’s a sign at the end of a driveway advertising for workers, and he sees the respect in the man’s eyes when he takes in the Impala. 

The man’s name is Marty, and he’s looking for a full-time construction worker. It’s hard labor, he warns Sam, and Sam shrugs. Hard work feels appealing to him right now. Maybe he’ll get tired enough to actually sleep. 

He asks if Miracle can come on the job with him, and Marty agrees that if she stays out of the way, he doesn’t have a problem with it. They shake on it, and Sam drives down the road to sleep in the Walmart parking lot he saw earlier, trying to ignore the sick knot of dread and grief in his stomach. 

Marty’s the first. But tomorrow there will be more people, and probably more the day after that. He’s going to keep meeting people that Dean will never know, experience things that Dean will never experience, see places Dean will never get to see. Dean won’t know these things about him, because Dean’s not here. He’s ashes buried in a cemetery next to Mary and John. 

Sam is going to have to live. There’s nothing Sam wants less, and yet- this is what he promised Dean. 

He'll live until the day it kills him.


End file.
